News > Press > Plans for new brewery near Lafitte Corridor in “very early stages”

Plans for new brewery near Lafitte Corridor in “very early stages”

6 Mar 2015

An old warehouse located at 2606 St. Louis Street near the corner of North Dorgenois Street may soon become Urban South Brewery, a beer hall and restaurant.

The building, located near the Lafitte Greenway Corridor, is currently under construction, according to Ramsey Green, partner of Green Coast Enterprises, GCE Green Development, LLC and former Deputy Superintendent for Operations of the Recovery School District. Green, who is helping with the project, says that the company has been working in Mid-City for two years now.

“We’ve invested almost $2 million within a four block radius of this site,” Green said.

The building has been vacant since Hurricane Katrina. Green chose this site for the project because of surrounding developments, he said, including an upcoming movie theater planned for Broad Street and the local Whole Foods.

“At least from our perspective and for our tenants, it would be great to have more commercial viabilities within walking or riding distance,” Green said.

Tulane graduate Jacob Landry, who works with Green Coast Enterprises, helped come up with the idea for the brewery, according to a report by WWL-TV. Landry is hoping the site will become a success so he can share his passion for beer.

“He had identified this spot as a place that he was interested in doing and we said ‘well lets explore this idea together’ and that’s where we are at this point,” Green said. “We’re very excited about potentially doing the project. We’re in the incredibly early stages of it.”

According to Green, the company has not found a restaurant operator yet.

“There’s people we’re interested in. There’s people who contacted us but nobody solid yet. The only solid tenant would be a brewery and that is a new company based in New Orleans,” Green said.

Green added that last week a meeting was held with neighbors as a part of the Neighborhood Participation Plan that the City Planning Commission requires of applicants.

According to Green, the feedback from the meeting was “largely very positive.”

“I think people are excited to see some development and some investment there, and that’s what we want. We want people to be excited about this project because it’s our neighborhood too,” Green said. “We’ve done four different buildings in that area and I think people are excited to see that neighborhood in general getting a little more attention to it than in the past.”

The new brewery would join a host of other developments spurred by the construction of the Lafitte Greenway, the 2.6-mile park that spans from the French Quarter to Mid-City and is expected to open this spring. Other plans include a $100 million mixed-use development that includes a boutique hotel and expansive gym, and a new CVS-anchored strip mall proposed for the old Home Depot building site on Carrollton Avenue.

According to Green, the company is hoping to have a building permit by June.

“We really want people to support it and by and large, people have supported it. And that corridor, I think has a lot of opportunity. This would be a really expensive project to do and we would love to be able to do it and we’re hoping to get it moving fast sooner than later,” Green said.